‘On way xxx’ the text from Gary read.
‘OK see you soon xxx’ Becky replied.
Twenty minutes ‘til he got home.
“I can do this,” Becky said out loud. “I can manage twenty minutes.”
“Mummy, who are you talking to?”
Becky spun around, almost leaping out of her skin at her daughter’s voice. “Oooh you made mummy jump, Leonie, I thought you were in bed, asleep.”
“I don’t want to be asleep Mummy; I want to play with the baby.”
“What baby, sweetheart?” Becky said, bending down to her little girl. Becky stroked her daughter’s fine blonde hair off her face and the little girl looked up at her mummy and smiled. Her teeth were white and tiny; Becky remembered when they had looked so cute as they had broken through the gums as uneven little milk teeth. Leonie’s teeth were all straight and perfect but they no longer looked cute.
Somehow, the smile had a more sinister edge to it. The girl leered rather than smiled and sometimes Becky caught the toddler looking at her with an expression of what she could only describe as pure evil. Of course, as soon as she realised Becky was looking, the evil dissolved and the pretty three-year-old shone though again. Everyone was fooled except Becky.
Twenty minutes. It wasn’t a long time in the great scheme of things, but Becky had hoped Leonie would stay asleep longer. The girl was creeping Becky out and she wanted Gary home; she couldn’t stand being alone with her. But Gary didn’t believe her when she told him she was frightened. He thought she was imagining things. He was getting tired of it, he thought it was going on a little too long, but Becky wasn’t imagining it, not at all.
“I want to play with the baby, Mummy,” Leonie said again.
“Your dolly? Is that what you mean?” Becky said. She found Leonie’s favourite doll and handed it to her.
Leonie looked at the doll with ill-disguised contempt. “Not the dolly. I want to play with the baby, not the dolly,” she said.
Becky was surprised at the emphasis she placed on the words; Leonie’s vocabulary was very advanced for her age.
Becky blinked in surprise. “The, the baby? My baby?” she said. Her gaze flicked up to the top of the stairs where the bathroom was and her hand strayed to her stomach in a subconscious act of protection. “How do you know about the baby? I’ve only just done a pregnancy test.”
“I can hear him,” Leonie said. “I can hear him moving about in there and I want to play with him.”
A shudder wracked Becky’s body and she only managed to control herself with a great deal of effort.
“Wait here, sweetheart,” Becky said. She wandered around the living room; if anyone had been watching it would have looked like she was dusting in a random fashion. Becky was making sure of the right angles for the collection of CCTV cameras and webcams she’d bought and installed. They had been delivered that morning and while Leonie was asleep for her mid-day nap, Becky made herself busy hiding them and working out how they operated.
They were all hooked up to the computer and as soon as she switched it on, they started recording direct to the hard drive.
‘Now Daddy will see what I have to put up with, you evil kid!’ she said to herself.
Becky turned back to her daughter and smiled at her. “Now sweetheart, why don’t you play with your dolly while I get Daddy’s dinner ready? He’ll be home in fifteen minutes,” Becky said.
“I don’t want to play with the dolly. I want! To play! With the baby!” Leonie said, enunciating every syllable, her tiny fists clenched at her sides, arms stiff-straight and a grimace on her face the like of which Becky had never seen.
Becky leaped back from the little girl. The venom in her tone, the way she clenched her teeth as she spoke and her eyes flashing pure hatred were more than Becky could stand.
“Get away from me, you evil little bastard!” Becky shouted.
“I don’t think so, Mummy,” Leonie said in a cold, measured voice. She ran into the kitchen and Becky heard the cutlery drawer open.
“What are you doing Leonie?” she called, but she was backing off towards the door to the stairs as she spoke.
“I’m going to play with the baby,” Leonie said in an eerie, sing-song voice. She entered the living room from the kitchen holding two of Becky’s knives in her hands. “I’m going to cut that fucking baby right out of your god-damn womb and play with it!”
Becky screamed and ran for the stairs.
Gary came home to find Becky slumped across the top of the stairs; half in, half out of the bathroom. Her wrists were slashed and the front of her dress was bloodied. He tried to resuscitate her before calling the ambulance and police but she was dead, she had bled out before he had got to her.
The positive pregnancy test was found by a police officer and Gary broke down and started crying then.
“We lost our baby daughter, Leonie almost three years ago. She was Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and Becky didn’t seem able to cope with her loss, she never got through the denial stage of grief. We thought trying for another baby would help her come to terms with it but it looks like she decided she couldn’t handle it after all.”
“Sir? Do you know you have CCTV cameras all over the living room?”
“No, I have no idea what that’s for, wait let me look.” Gary said, wiping tears away with one hand, switching the computer screen on with the other. There were four screens showing various angles of the living room. Gary clicked ‘view’ and the playback facility began skipping back. Something caught his eye and he played the video from there.
They watched with a mixture of shock and disbelief as the images of Becky being chased from the room by the blonde demon-child waving kitchen knives in the air filled the screen…
Pictures from Pixabay.com